Sucker Punch

I went and saw Sucker Punch tonight. It's a pure action film that takes place almost-entirely inside a CGI fantasy world. For some reason, these movies seem "fun" to me. The difference between these movies and movies like Avatar or the Star Wars prequels is that Sucker Punch isn't trying to trick you. It wants you to know that it's CGI, and it doesn't care. Avatar wants you to think that James Cameron went out into space and filmed something.

So I saw the trailer and wanted to see the movie. It looked like it was Kill Bill meets something like Alice in Wonderland meets something like Shutter Island. All inside the world of 300.

I didn't know if I'd like it or not, but I really didn't care. And now that I've seen it, I still don't know if I liked it or not.

There was action, for sure. The main character goes into a fantasy world as a way to "mesmerize" people as part of their escape plan, and the scenes are cool. Hand-to-hand combat, gunfights, aerial battles, and swordplay dominate over several different backdrops. World War II, deep space, and medieval battles all exist in the film, all with strange "modern" twists. It was also cool that the protagonist uses both a samurai sword and guns...something you don't see too often.

And the women are all hot. The main character spends most of the movie (especially the fantasy scenes) in a little skirt, a half-top, and high heels. She's an action star for females, and a sex fantasy for males. And the non-fantasy scenes take place in a sort of burlesque, meaning that she (and the other girls) are constantly dressed as dancers.

It's hot. They all look great, and while there's no sex in the movie...it's constantly being teased. So when it's all said and done, it had the two things that I was expecting...good-looking girls and CGI action.

But if I have a problem with the movie, it's that it tried to be more than that. I'ts not getting good reviews, and I think it's because the movie didn't really know what it wanted to be. Was it purely action? Was it a drama? Was it trying to teach you a lesson? Was it some kind of modern re-telling of a lesson we should all be learning?

It seems like all of that was in the movie, but the best scenes were the ones that just focused on the action. Everything else either dragged on or confused.

If you want a fun action movie, it does the trick, for the most part. You're going to have to wade through some other stuff, though.